Defying Lone Wolf Syndrome - Camping with "Kevin Wild"

This is Kevin. I do not know his last name. He goes by Kevin Wild on YouTube, which is how I found him. Here's what I do know about him. One, he just did a 42-day solo trip to Labrador. This tells me that he's irrationally obsessed with canoe tripping, and that is good. Very good. Secondly, from his videos, I sense that he's a considerate person. This is also very good, and a crucial checkbox for me to consider exiting my introverted cocoon. So here we are, meeting up for the first time, and so far, hitting it off. Yeah, a consideration? We got time to look at another one or two. They're all in this vicinity. Is there a nice spot there to hang out? Yeah, what's your preference? Well, I like the fact that this place is unused, even though it's, you know, there's not as many clear flat spots. I can easily find some spots, so. Sounds good to me. So I'm out here with Kevin Wild. Just met him today at the launch. We've got a beautiful campsite here under some huge white pine, secluded little bay on a cottagey lake, but it's late in the season, so it's quiet. This is awesome. Some fishing tomorrow. Happy camper. Kevin, how do you feel about our accommodations tonight? Yeah, I think it's a beauty little site. Not too well used. We've got some great views on pretty much all sides here, so yeah. Found myself a nice little, doesn't look like my tent's flat, but inside there is a flat channel that I'll be sleeping nice and flat in there, and yeah, perfect weather, beauty little site. Yeah, the main problem tonight is going down to minus six suddenly. We didn't realize it's going to be quite that cold, so the flatness of your tent pad won't be that big issue. So I got connected with Kevin online recently. Just met in person today, and one of the things that made me want to meet up with him is he did a 42-day trip to Labrador this summer, so he's got the passion. That's clear. Yeah. You got the passion. Yeah. Oh yeah, and I was thinking today, I don't even know your last name. Oh, well I'll tell you off camera. You're a loser, Jono, and everybody knows it. Good man. It is almost November, so nights are pretty long and cold. You're gonna need a solid amount of firewood. To start? Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, we've got quite an awesome spot here. It was somewhat improvised, this location, but couldn't have worked out much better. Kevin's getting all the firewood, so I better go help him. So this was a backup plan for Kevin and I. We were supposed to be doing a little bit bigger trip, five nights or so, but what happened? Well, our baseball team, the Toronto Blue Jays, decided to make their way into the World Series. Who would have guessed? And they actually beat the Dodgers in game one, then lost game two, so we couldn't bring ourselves to go away for the rest of the series, and we're just doing a short trip now. Be back for game four. We're missing game three. Let's go Blue Jays. All right, let's go. Well, we got pretty warm sawing, but still the chill is coming on in the air, and just knowing it's going down to minus six tonight, first decently cold night of the year. Yeah, fire just feels good, and we're about to put some cold beverages in us. Yeah, that's hilarious. It was my favorite beer for like a decade. Kevin's proving to be an invaluable tripping partner so far. Not only did he bring some chips, but la fin du monde from Quebec. Well, your bilingual, you say it. La fin du monde. There you go. End of the world. Yeah, it's been one of my favorite beers for about 15 years, so thank you, my friend. Cheers. Pleasure. Pleasure to get here with you. Oh my lord, that's good. It's nine percent. It packs a punch. You would think a nine percent beer would be like really heavy and gross, but it's not. It's refreshing. It's great. Dude, that's hilarious you brought this. You're my new best friend. I had no idea. What was his, uh, I can't remember. Probably gonna elude us. Oh, talking, talking, speaking with angels. Right, yeah. Because his wife, his partner, was diagnosed with cancer. Yeah, and then, uh, and then there was one where he went to England. Do you see that? Yes. Paddling through a river there. Yeah. We're talking about Robin, Robert Perkins. He passed recently. He was a great canoeing filmmaker, so. Yeah. Cheers to him. Cheers to him. Yeah. What do you think? I'll throw some meat on there. Yeah, I think it's time. In addition to one of my favorite beers, Kevin is also supplying sausages tonight. Cheers. Thank you. Cheers. That is smart. Yeah, it does. Oh, if only you got that fall live video. Yeah, if I was recording it. But you can't be recording all the time, you know. I was just trying to stay alive as well. Yeah. There are few better ways to spark a friendship than an evening around a fire, but these bonds don't always come so easy, especially as you get older. Friendships need to be stoked and tended before they dwindle to embers and eventually go out. In the last 10 years, I've moved eight times while overhauling my life to escape the city. As I moved around, my oldest friendships became long distance relationships, making them difficult to maintain. And I've been self-employed for almost five years now, working at home alone and then spending a third of the year on wilderness trips, much of that alone as well. So the close friendships that came automatically from jobs and day to day life are no longer a given. And I've realized that I'll have to make an effort to fill the void. You have the recurve one, eh? Yeah. Curve blade. Yeah. I like it. You should give it a shot. It is not minus six this morning. It is probably just around zero, maybe just above. Nothing to worry about. Balmy. Oh, look at that. We're just soaking this in. End of the season. Oh, you like the Colombian? Yeah, I like the Colombian too. What a paradise. How much time a week do you spend editing normally, do you think? It's just completely random. If I, a day that I'm editing, once I get into it, I normally like go all day, but then I get busy and I go like a long time. Like I haven't, I haven't edited anything. Now I want to get the trip done and then I just kind of quickly went through my footage after the last trip just to see how everything, that's how I found it. Oh, I don't really like how, uh, I need to get this steadier. I need to get some wind noise. Well, we're just wrapping up our morning here at a luxurious coffee drinking session. It's another thing that made me think that Kevin and I would be good tripping partners is he takes the time to enjoy things like that out here. Misty morning, why rush off? Just going to do some fishing in this secluded bay. That's our plan for the day. Hopefully shore lunch later. And we're having such great time that we're considering extending the trip. If the Jays were to get smoked tonight, we would definitely both think about carrying on. There's another section further down that we could do. That to me is a nightmare scenario, having to pull out a hook from my own finger. Well, it is just a glorious day out here. The high was like 10 degrees, but don't even have a sweater on. It feels beautiful. Time to get our lines in the water. See if we can find lunch. And that's our, that's our agenda. Yeah. Let's see what we can catch. The pro and the, uh, and the noob. If I was ever good at fishing, I'm just a hack now. What are you casting first? You got something? Uh, yeah, the reject, uh, lures that I haven't used since, uh, I realized, uh, just preparing for this trip that I, I left my tackle box, uh, the last time I, I camped and fish, so I couldn't find it. So now I have, uh, lures that I haven't used before. This is kind of like a little Clio kind of silver and orange, silver and orange. Nice. Give it a shot. Looks good. Orange can be a good color. But you, you got, Oh, you got a paddle tail rigged weedless, even though, well, there are some weeds around. My canoe is literally quite literally the favorite thing. My most prized, uh, or the favorite thing that I own just represents freedom. Yeah. Peace, everything good. First cast right off the cliff. I've got to work on my aim. There's some nice rock tripe here. If we don't get any fish delicious lichen. So we're on the Pickerel river system here. There's a wide variety of species, but mainly we'd be looking at bass, walleye, and pike. And I've actually caught a couple of huge pike right in this, this area, along with some nice bass. And that used to mean so much to me. I used to try really hard with the angling. It was my identity. I was an angler. Now my identity is nature lover, I guess. I find that often to be at odds with the angler side, not, not exclusively, but yeah, different mentality at this point in my life. It just seems like it's a more natural looking lure. It actually looks like a fish. And it doesn't take long to lose confidence in a lure. It's like 10 casts. What? Yeah, this lures. So we've been fishing around the bay for about an hour now. Not a bite for either of us to show for it. And try some vertical jigging. Find and fall when the water gets a bit cold. Fish don't want to move that much sometimes. So slow it down, size it down. Roll on a wave upwind and then let yourself drift down. Yep. Are you familiar with the concept of fall turnover? No. When the water temperature is exactly four degrees Celsius, it's at its most dense. So anything warmer or colder is less dense and therefore floats on it. So once the air temperature cools the surface water to exactly four degrees Celsius, 40 degrees Fahrenheit, it's dense and it starts to sink. So it's an important process for lake health because it brings oxygen down to the bottom of the lake because the surface water is more turned up, more oxygenated, so that water can sink and get oxygen back down to the bottom. And the bottom of the lake gets really oxygen deficient throughout the summer through decomposition, which uses oxygen. So it's an interesting cycle. Same thing happens in spring, except the surface, I guess, warms to four degrees and then sinks and it turns over the lake. So that's interesting because I know that obviously trout, like lake trout for instance, they seek the deeper waters. I would think that trout want the oxygen, but if we're in the deep in the bottom this summer where there's less oxygen, so they prefer the cooler water, although it's less oxygenated. Yeah, ultimately, yeah. So this gives them fresh oxygen down there. However, once the lake is cold in fall, then they can wander more freely. So it's an interesting process. Pretty amazing that just, it's one of those little things in nature and in physics that just works perfect in perfect harmony with nature. Very interesting. Still not a bite out here, but having a great day. Yeah, that's actually my least favorite job to do of camp set up or take down. Inflating and deflating. It's pretty close to one of my least favorite as well. Like the tent set up is kind of fun, you know, setting up your new home. Fire prep is rewarding. Yeah. John promised me a pike on this one. That was practice. All right. Well, we had a good tour around and the wind picked up, so we just went back to camp for a coffee and here's our last shot at fish. A couple hours of daylight left. Something terrible has happened. Kevin's had a mishap and he's going to need some surgery. Let's see. I seem to have hooked myself. No. And I cannot reach that. Okay, okay. I don't have the pliers because it's just like pinched in a little bit to the webbing of the life jacket. He is a dork like me. He is my friend. There you go. You're free. Thank you. Swim away. Catch and release. Yeah. Dead calm out here. Dead quiet. Couldn't have asked for anything more for this little trip. And it's a special spot too. My dad and I took him on his first backcountry trip ever. We camped there the first night. Good memories in this little bay. Dad and I didn't get out on a trip this year. We hoped for an October trip, but with freezing temperatures and the Jays in the World Series, we rented a little cabin instead, right before I met up with Kevin. A funny thing about growing up is that your age difference with your parents feels smaller and smaller as you get older. And if you're lucky, your dad becomes not just your father, but like a best friend. Better than a best friend in a lot of ways, because they have more experience and wisdom, because they unconditionally have your back, and because while friendships can come and go, a father-son bond lasts a lifetime. Well, I'm here at the launch. Dad and I are about to embark on a just three-night little trip. Should be some great bass fishing. And this is dad's first portage trip, so excited to take him on it. What do you think? How are you feeling about your first portaging trip? Excellent. Excited? Nervous? Going for it. Yeah? Got a doubleheader going here. Not a big one. Well, actually, you know what? Combined, they might make a meal. We're trying to get dinner here, so let's net these and see. Well, we're back from fishing. I think it's about 7 30, and we finally settled on some small bass, about a pound each. But combined, they filled the pan, and you can hear that sizzle, so that's going to be real good. And that hot oil just went in the fire, because we're done. And here's the first bite. Okay, first bite. Yep. Oh, oh god. That is beautiful. Okay, my turn. Yeah, it's recording now. Okay, so here we go. We're in this beautiful channel, and Jonathan has landed the horse. It is meaty. Oh my god. It's not the longest pike. It's meaty. What a battle. I had it on light gear, on an eight pound fluoro leader. Hooks out, too. I thought I lost it for a second, too. He must have been swimming straight to the boat. Oh, my adrenaline pumping. Head on him. I wonder what it weighs. I was hoping to get into a big pike. Oh, oh yeah. That's good. That's 10. Yeah. Oh, my god. Well, we're running out of time here. It's hard to believe that two lines in the water for most of the day can't get a bite, or even have a follow to the boat. Tried a range of tactics. Hey. That's how it goes sometimes. Yeah, exactly. We got some, we got a ton of food anyway, so we'll be all right. All right, that's it. We give up. It's cooling off quickly. The fire feels lovely. So Kevin covered dinner last night. We had no plans of sharing meals, but just worked out that way. Falafel tonight. Awesome. Cheers. One of my backcountry favorites. Oh, yeah. Got his spot. That's great. All right. All right, John. Yeah. Let me top you up. Unfortunately, I only had three of these, so we're going to share the last one. John's been kind enough to share his scotch with me. So that's good. That's good. That's good. That's good. Thank you. Lots of heads. Yeah. Oh, that's good. Still one of my favorite beers, and he just happened to bring it. Cheers. What a pal. Thank you. Cheers. That's good. But I guess your stick stove is big enough that it kind of is like a little campfire. Yeah. You got a big enough stick stove. Exactly. That's what I love about it. It's like so powerful. You can boil water and like have a pot and a pan on there, grill meat. Yeah, the smaller ones, a lot of work just to keep it going to boil a pot of water. I know. Yeah, I had tried those initially. I didn't like them. It wasn't until I got more sizable stick stoves that I really fell in love with them. But I got to say, I do just love regular campfire. If you're, you know, it's a bushwhack site, you can find yourself a nice little spot with your rocks in place. Yeah. Yeah. It is a comfort. Hey. Morning. You getting up? Yeah. Yeah. Sweet. You want to know what happened? I do. Jay's lost in 18 innings. They played a full extra game. Ended at 3 a.m. Painful. Did I wake you up with my stirring? Not at all. I was kind of on the, I was ready to get up as well. I'm super thirsty. No, no, not yet. Yeah. I just want a coffee. Yeah. When did you start watching Tumble Home? Maybe six, seven years ago. Yeah. Is that when you started watching this sort of stuff? Yeah. Yeah. When I first started watching canoe trips on YouTube, I think Tumble Home was one of the first that kind of stood out and yeah, that really brought me back wanting to start doing canoe trips again. I hadn't done them for a long time since my teenage years. Really enjoyed watching those trips and got my imagination going again. Another beauty. Another beauty. All right, we're getting packed up here. Had a lovely stay at this campsite. Well, this is it. Possibly it for my canoe tripping season. Kevin didn't record our trip. He was too distracted with my sparkling conversation, I suppose. Just enjoying the vibes. Yeah. Yeah. Which is respectable. Yeah. Or you're just ashamed to be associated with me. No, it was nice to take a break from recording and just sit back and watch John do his thing. So yeah, it was fun. Yeah. So, but you can continue watching this trip because Kevin is carrying on. That's right. He's going to skip the Jays games and they lost last night in 18 innings. So yeah, I thought long and hard about it. And my plan originally, both our plan was to head home after a couple nights to catch the World Series, the Jays. But after thinking long and hard about it, I think I'm going to push on. Beautiful forecast for the next two, three days. So yeah, it's killing me to leave. But yeah, he's heading into Nogginosh Provincial Park. Beautiful. Sort of more, more terrain like this. So I'm jealous. If Jays get blown out tonight, I'm going to be beside myself. At least one of us will be out here enjoying it. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And I've been picking Kevin's brain about his 42 day Labrador trip. So most definitely like tune in, check that out. It's going to be insane. Insane. I hope so. I'm incredibly stoked for it. So yeah, it's been an absolute pleasure, sir. Yeah. Likewise. We're literally parting ways right now. He's going that way. I'm going this way. Safe travels back to your car. Yeah. Yeah. Enjoy your trip. Do it again sometime. Nogginosh. Yeah, absolutely. Maybe Pucksaw River or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I need redemption there. As we paddled away, I was glad I broke from my lonerism as I often am, but not always. And those times can make it feel like it's not worth the risk. Dad and I once coined this condition as lone wolf syndrome, a belief that one can function most effectively without involving others. People can complicate, they can disrupt, they can damage. But while self-reliance is a stable path to follow, it's not the only way. Too much of anything, including what we consider our strengths, will cause imbalance. Even the loner will starve if he does not at least occasionally eat from the table of friendship. Waking up after a brilliant Blue Jays win last night. Don't have immediate regret after skipping the rest of the trip, which is nice. Made it to Wawa, Ontario, and now another game tonight and back to Toronto on Friday. So let's go Blue Jays. Never love a sports team. Never invest that emotion and energy into that abyss. Anyway, Kevin was carrying on, but he ran into an obstacle. This ice is pretty thick. So here's how thick the ice is right next to my canoe. Pretty thick. Not quite an inch, maybe three quarters of an inch thick. So yeah, it's a lot more than just a thin skim of ice here. Oh boy. So that was a showstopper, unfortunately for Kevin. At least I didn't miss out on extending the trip. But I also just wanted to remind you to check out Kevin's channel. I'm so excited for his Labrador trip, but he has lots more in the meantime. And then we mentioned Tumblehome, Jason Irwin, and Robert Perkins' channels. Both have so much great content, very authentic and skillfully done. So check those out. That's my holiday gift to you. Enjoy. I just love looking at the map. At some point, I did kind of a big trip through Wabakini, but before that same year, I had a route that was planned out, same like Allenwater. But it would have taken me up through Takeoff, through the Miscanow River, out of the park. But then I calculated it all on Paddle Planner. It's like almost 600 kilometers. Maybe this is a little bit too much. I know, I know. It always seems so easy. You're like, oh yeah. Those are poor talks that no one's been through either. So you're probably going to be bushwhacking. I probably would have taken me a month and a half to get through that. Yeah, well, this is funny because that's also what I used on my Albany trip.